Blair
by Nyx Underwood
Summary: It is my fate to be a place-holder. Chuck is merely biding his time until the promised day when he can shrug off this life and ascend like a butterfly to take his rightful place by Blair's side.
1. Blair

A/N: This is a strange little stand alone that climbed into my head while I reflected on Daphne du Maurier's _Rebecca_. The basic premise of the book is that it is written from the perspective of an unnamed narrator, who is fascinated by her husband's late wife. Completely AU, of course.

BLAIR

"We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic - now mercifully stilled, thank God - might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion as it had before."

- Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca.

* * *

When Blair Bass was the mistress of this holiday house, she would often look out the window, announce suddenly that it was going to rain, and run out to trim the azaleas. Sometimes, Chuck Bass would join her, for no other reason than to watch her in her white gardening clothes as she sent worried glances to the sky. On the days when their children were with their friends, and the grey, rumbling sky threatened to burst at any moment, Chuck would grab his wife's hands, throw the clippers on the ground and kiss her until those first drops landed on their heads.

I can live it over and over again, although of course I wasn't there. Because Blair Bass and I have never met.

It was always at this holiday house – Barbiston – that I felt as if I could live their memories. Each corner was haunted by a past that I had never known. And it seemed that when I was here, I would once more pick up my holiday task where I left off: the careful chronicling of a past that belonged to another woman.

Eric Van Der Woodsen would roll his eyes at me, while cutting up sandwiches for his grandchildren, who were climbing all over Paul. "You are utterly tireless in your crusade."

"It's not a crusade," I would say defensively. "I find the past interesting."

Eric smiled at his lover, grabbing one of the toddlers form his lap and kissing him lightly on the head. "But it's not _your_ past."

"But it's all of _your_ pasts. And it fascinates me."

"You're fascinated by Blair," Eric invariably retorted. "After all these years, you just want to make a woman that you've never met happy by recording everything you know about her."

There was nothing I could say to that; he was absolutely right. The history I was preoccupied with writing was not my own. It's origins lay in a time before I was even born. And it's legacy would outlive my brief cameo role. But I couldn't help it. I was addicted to Chuck and Blair Bass – to Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf. And I liked to think that I had more claim on their legacy than most.

After all, I'm married to Blair's husband.

I find it difficult to recall exactly when I first heard their names. When I first moved to the city, it seemed like I only heard the words Chuck and Blair uttered in whispers – in the lowered voice of gossip.

At that time, Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass were no more real to me than very beautiful models on the side of buildings. The few times I was involved in a direct conversation about either of them, I felt strange not whispering their names; the syllables had too much significance for me now. They had the shock of a curse and the reverence of a holy word.

Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass were in love. There was consensus on that at least.

Of course, that wasn't what the gossip was usually concerned with. People were more interested in the intrigue that surrounded the glamorous couple. Every time Chuck stumbled during the early years of his position as CEO, people would shake their heads and refer darkly to his wild days.

"Imagine, trusting that amount of money to a punk kid," Louise tsk-ed when I asked her about those early days.

Louise was a kind woman who had taken me under her wing during my first months in New York. I had come from Illinois with an impressive inheritance and little understanding of the real world, and was desperate to soak in as much information as I possibly could. Louise was a godsend when it came to sage advice about handling myself in New York. But we would soon lose contact; even in the early days of our friendship, she made me feel ignorant, and I unfairly resented her for it.

"He's hardly a punk kid, Louise," I protested, my head light from the champagne that was being liberally served with brunch. I had felt so sophisticated at the time. Louise must have laughed at my gauche behaviour. But she was always kind to me. "He's at least twice my age."

"Well, that wife of his keeps him on the straight and narrow," Louise admitted. "Always has, always will."

That was probably the beginning of my fascination with Blair Waldorf. She seemed unbelievably beautiful and glamorous, encapsulating the alien glamour of New York City. I was probably only twenty-two years old, but I remember leafing through the _New York Times_ in a café and finding a picture of Chuck and Blair in the social pages.

It was unfathomable that a newspaper-quality photograph could convey so much emotion. There was Chuck in that showy suit with his signature bow tie, staring at her intensely, while Blair rested her hand on his chest and smiled at someone off camera.

His eyes do have a gift for intensity. They change with the light, even more marked now that his hair has turned grey. Then though, he was young and powerful with a beautiful family. That's the strange thing about photographs. They taunt us with moments that have passed. The instant we capture them on film they pass from our hands. This moment was particularly poignant. My breath caught as I looked at the smitten man, who was on the surface such a hardened son-of-a-bitch.

"Forty-five and her husband still looks at her in _that_ way," the waitress sighed as she glanced over my shoulder. "Lucky bitch."

Even then I was affronted by the obscenity in relation to someone who seemed to embody perfection.

It's embarrassing, really. It embarrasses me when I look back on the way I fiercely guarded my image of Blair. Since that time, I've spoken to anybody and everybody about her, only to find that Blair was anything but the wilting flower that I envisaged. It was pure fantasy, this notion that I could protect her from anything. When I look at that picture of Blair that hangs in the hallway, where she sits next to an achingly youthful Serena, wearing a white beret and a red coat, I can almost see her roll her eyes at me. I still murmur an apology to her for my foolish naivety.

Thankfully, as the years passed, and my interest in the famous couple was no more intense than my interest in the actors in gossip magazines. I could pick up the thread of their lives and put it back down with little thought. They were fodder for gossip, even in my much younger circle. But after a few years in the city, I felt like a local. And locals were never star struck.

The day Blair died, I was rushing to work, and caught only a glancing reference at a local news-stand. But just a part of the headline was enough to stop me in my tracks. "Billionairess Bass Perishes - "

"You read it, you buy it," the man behind the counter commented in a bored tone.

My hands were shaking when I passed two bills over the counter. The Bass jet had passed off radar en route home from Paris. Struck by lightning, I thought grimly. It seemed fitting somehow. Their eldest son, Henry, thanked everyone for their concern and requested that they respect the family's privacy.

Of course, no one respected the family's privacy in the slightest. It became a gruesome spectator-sport, watching Chuck's decline over the following months. There were bar brawls, there was public drunkenness, and even muttering on the Board of Bass Industries that he should be removed.

Then, there was a year of absolutely nothing. No news reports, no public sightings. It was a vacuum. To this day, I have no idea what happened in that time. Knowing Chuck as I do, he probably threw himself to the wind in the hope that it would take him to her.

Exactly one year later, sadder and older, Chuck Bass walked into the office and picked up where he left off. The media lost interest; it was Chuck's exuberance that made for interesting copy, and after he returned from the mystery disappearance, there was no sign of it.

My husband has many admirable qualities. He is loyal to his family, he cares furiously for his children. He has always been a courteous and generous husband. But, any trace of his former exuberance disappeared one morning en route from Paris. And since that day, his life has become a steady wind-down.

When I told my sister that I was marrying Chuck Bass, she shook her head at me. "It will never be enough, you know. It was the real thing between them. I mean you could sense it. He'll never love you like he loves her."

And she was right. But that was one thing that my sister would never understand. I didn't need the grand love story. I was happy to pick up the story in the middle. I think it was my inherent sensibleness that drew Chuck to me; there couldn't be anyone further from the Blair mould. Any attempt at a Blair counterfeit would have insulted his finely honed sensibilities.

It was lucky, really, that I didn't fit into the image that his family had of me. They expected a bimbo, I'm sure. But when they met me, they immediately saw that I tended more towards bookishness and mousiness than I did personal trainers and gold-digging.

"I was just relieved," Nate smiled when I asked him what he thought of me when he first met me.

"You didn't expect me to be such a nerd?"

"Pretty much," he admitted. "I mean, don't get me wrong – Blair was a complete geek, but…" he faltered at that. Emotions chased each other across his face.

"The two of you dated before Blair and Chuck got together, didn't you?"

He swallowed. Although his grief expressed itself in a different way to Serena's, I could tell that Blair had left a large hole in his life. Combined with his inherent discomfort with expressing emotion, I knew that it was a big step for him to be willing to talk to me – of all people – about his ex-girlfriend. "We dated for a lot longer than we should of, I think. But after she and Chuck finally…I mean when they opened those flood-gates. Well, let's just say that those years with me don't even come close."

"They really had something special, didn't they?"

Nate misunderstood me; he thought that I was jealous or upset by my observation. But really, I found it fascinating. The Chuck I knew, the man I call my husband, seemed to have so little in common with the Chuck they had known for almost half a century before he met me.

Our relationship began so haltingly, with coffees and the exchange of books, rather than grand shows of romance. It was easy for him to be around me, and soon enough he began to depend on my practicality. Then, one night he called me to ask for my help in selecting a painting for his house; I had been Lily's art collector for a while, so I didn't read much into it.

When I arrived, I found him slumped on the couch with a glass of scotch in his hand. Although I didn't understand it at the time, the evening had been designed as a clumsy and half-hearted bid for my attention. Of course, he had been overcome with heart-wrenching guilt and grief and ordered me to turn around and leave his house immediately.

"I had never really dated," he explained later. "I was at a loss. And was feeling more than a little guilty about even thinking about it."

"Blair would have wanted you to be happy," I said.

"No, she'd want me to be miserable and never get over her," he muttered. "I'd want the same thing."

In those early days, it could have gone either way. We could have been no more than friends – meeting only when Lily threw lavish parties for her staff. We would schedule lunches and continue those coffee dates, but I had long since given up on expecting any more than that. Until I found him in a dark corner of one of Lily's Christmas parties, with an look of inexpressible sadness on his face, undoubtedly thinking of Blair. My heart was filled with such tenderness that I had kissed him, surprised by the needy insistence of his response.

"Perhaps we should go back to your place," I whispered into his ear.

His immediate response had been to take a step back and to fix those dark eyes on me. It was the look Chuck gave people when he was trying to discern a motive. "Why on earth would you think we should do that?"

He was probably expecting me to blush furiously and run away from his barbed comments. He had misjudged his audience. "Because you're about to come apart at the seams and I want to help you."

A pause and then the smallest nod.

Later, when I lay naked in his arms, achingly aware that his mind had drifted back to Blair, I turned my head to look at him. "You never will get over her," I said. "She wouldn't have wanted you to be miserable, though."

"I'm a real shit, you know," Chuck responded after a while.

"Yeah?"

I felt him nod, although I wasn't looking at him. "Only a real shit would let someone as young as you jump aboard a sinking ship. And that's what I've been, since…she died."

"You can say her name, you know."

"Since Blair."

I've never quite been able to name the emotion that accompanied that statement. It was like the vertigo that comes with looking down from a great height. I knew from that night on that if I stayed by his side, I would never know love like that. There was, quite simply, not enough room in that damaged heart for anyone other than his family, his children, and most all that enigmatic woman who pervaded every space of this house.

"Tell me about Blair," I whispered.

We spoke of her often; I insisted upon it. But sometimes, he would be on the verge of telling me some story and would suddenly stop. To talk about her was a type of release for him, and I listened with a patient ear. But, some stories were too precious. They stayed in the secret space of his mind where Blair lived.

It was always a thrill to say her name; it was never forbidden in our house. In fact, we spoke of her often. In those early, resentful days with her children, I had asked them to talk about her freely. Soon enough we were laughing about their recollections of their parents' embarrassing public displays of affection, their passionate fights, and the way they seemed to move in sync when they prepared for glamorous dinners. Elizabeth remembered hiding in Blair's closet, watching the way her mother would spritz perfume into the air and walk through it. Invariably, Chuck would wrap his arms around her middle and kiss her neck, while Elizabeth blushed in embarrassment in the closet.

"I love you so fucking much," he said huskily.

"I love you so fucking much, too, Bass."

At that point, Elizabeth had gasped so loudly that her parents had discovered her. When the door opened, Chuck found her nestled in one of Blair's fur coats.

"You _swore_," she breathed. "Mommy, too."

"Beth Bass, were you snooping?"

"I think she was," Blair said conspiratorially, scooping her up and placing her gently on the bed. "I wonder where she inherited that charming genetic trait?"

"I have no idea," he deadpanned, before turning his attention onto his youngest daughter. "You remember what we do to snoops, don't you?"

"Do we tickle them?" Blair drawled.

And with that, her parents had tickled her mercilessly.

These little anecdotes were easy to share. There would be laughter and tears whenever one of the kids would start a sentence with "Remember the time when Mom…". But it was harder to draw out those stories about her death. When Blair had died, the entire landscape of their lives had changed. And most irrevocably of all, their father had changed.

"It's a kind of BD, AD situation, to be honest," Henry said, frank as always. "Before Mom Died, After Mom Died. He was one person before and afterwards…well, he's been haunted by a ghost."

When I asked Henry what it was like when Chuck heard the news, his face paled and he shook his head. No one who had been there at the time seemed willing to talk about it. Serena had been slower than most to accept my presence in all of their lives.

It was the night we announced our engagement, when Serena stormed from the room, with Chuck in pursuit. I caught only the tail end of their conversation in furious whispers in the kitchen.

"What am I supposed to do with a _girlfriend_, Serena?"

"So you decide that making her your _wife_ is the answer? What about Blair, Chuck? Have you forgotten about the vows you made to her?"

"Don't talk about what you don't understand," he hissed. "You have no idea what it feels like. All of you. You don't know how it feels. It's like someone ripped my fucking heart out and I have to walk around every day…"

"Chuck," she said, incredibly gently.

I am almost certain that my proud and private husband shed tears in that kitchen. "It's too much. It's just too much. Why would she make me fucking love her like that if she wasn't going to stay with me?"

I felt like a voyeur in the dark hallway, listening to this private exchange. I would have loved to see his face; I had never heard his voice touched with so much emotion. I heard a fait rustle, which told me that Serena had taken her step-brother in her arms. "I miss her so much, Chuck. It doesn't get any easier, does it?"

"It gets easier to pretend to be okay," he whispered. "Which is why it also gets worse."

Serena was now only adopting the pose of disapproval. "Does _she_ make you happy?"

"She makes it easier to pretend to be happy," he said simply, and I took some solace in that.

"Then I guess I should help her pick a dress," Serena said, the fight gone from her voice.

And slowly, over time, Serena had come to accept my presence, although she never made the overtures of friendship that she did to Nate's wife. Nor did she ever speak to me about Blair, apart from the most superficial, factual statements she could manage. "That was while we were at Yale," she'd say. Or "Cyrus died before Elizabeth was born." And she certainly never spoke about the day when Blair's plane crashed.

It was Lily who often took pity on me, petting my hand comfortingly. "You have to understand. It's a painful time for us to remember."

I was close to begging. "I just want to understand what it was like."

Lily bit her lip; she was easy to manipulate. "Chuck refused to believe it. I think that his body simply couldn't accommodate that kind of loss. He became mono-manically obsessed with the thought that she had survived."

Lily sighed, lost in a time before I had known any of them. My eyes travelled to the pictures that sat in pride of place on the mantle piece. There was Serena on her wedding day. There was Eric and Paul with their tiny adopted son. And there was Chuck and Blair on Christmas Day, three years after Abigail was born. There was a small twinge, as always, when I saw that the picture from my wedding day was in the less coveted spot; I understood, but it still hurt me.

"It took months to find her body. Months of Chuck lost and furious and refusing to accept that she was really gone. And then, one day, we received a phone call. And all I can remember is Chuck hanging up the phone. We were all there – the kids, Blair's mother, everyone – and I remember that Eleanor poked her head out of the kitchen and just stared at him. He didn't say anything, but we all knew that the retrieval team had finally proven to him what we all knew to be true. It was over."

"What did he say?"

Perhaps it was perverse to seek out more information about the day my husband found out that his wife was dead, but I couldn't resist. Lily couldn't understand my preoccupation with the love of my husband's life. And she didn't trust it. But, she never begrudged me the stories.

"Nothing," she said after a brief pause. "I think Abby asked him what they had said. She was just starting college at that point. I think she said, 'Dad, are you okay?' or something like that. And Chuck started pacing. And then his whole body seemed to crumple, as if something was pressing down on it. He just crouched there – right there, next to where you're sitting – and clenched his fists against his forehead and let out this _scream_. I've never head anything like it. And until the day that I die, I doubt I will ever hear the sound again."

The afternoon was spoilt after that. And there was nothing left to say.

"You won't tell Chuck that I asked?"

"Of course."

Each year, on the day Blair fell from the sky, Chuck will disappear. In some morbid way, I think he takes his late wife out for a date. The entire week, he will be cruel to those around him, he will snap at me. And then comes the day of disappearance. Then, in the morning, he will be sitting at the kitchen table with a copy of the crossword already open at my place.

I take these small kindnesses and collect them in my hand. I feel like one day, when I pass from life to death, Blair will seek me out and I will be able to hand over all those years that she missed. And she will interrupt her indignant rant and take a moment to thank me for taking care of Chuck during those twilight years when she couldn't reach him.

The house I live in is a type of mausoleum. Every surface of it has been touched by Blair Waldorf, and I keep it that way for Chuck's sake. Whenever I move anything in the slightest, he gets that pained look in his eyes and glances at his wedding band. He still wears the one that Blair slipped on his finger.

"I'm not trying to replace her," I explained, when I informed him that he would not be needing a wedding band.

"I'm a shit for letting you do this," he said, shaking his head.

"You're not so bad," I grinned.

He smiled back. That was my reward.

I was not made for the great romance. I love my husband, and each day we take a step closer to old age, comfortable in our affection for each other and in the close proximity of his grand children.

He was wrong when he called himself a shit for doing this to me. He never once lied about what I was to him. We were to be companions – I was to make it easier for him to pretend to be happy.

I don't let it bother me as I scribble furiously in the room overlooking the garden, with the ghost of Blair leaning over my shoulder and criticising my story of her life. Soon enough her spectre will look out the window, decide that it is going to rain soon, and hurry outside to join Chuck as he trims the azaleas.

It is my fate to be a place-holder. Because even though he is kind to me often and gentle with me always, Chuck is merely biding his time until the promised day when he can shrug off this life and ascend like a butterfly to take his rightful place by Blair's side. Despite life's many, little pleasures, he knows that his happiness lies on the other side of the veil. It calls to him in her voice, and today he is out in the garden, trimming the azaleas and remembering each moment of his time with her.

One day, his decade-long wait will be over. And when that day comes, I will release my light hold on him and smile when they finally wrap their ghostly arms around each other.

*

_**Mrs. Danvers**__: You tried to take her place. You let him marry you. I've seen his face, his eyes. They're the same as those first weeks after she died. I used to listen to him, walking up and down, up and down, all night long, night after night, thinking of her. Suffering torture because he lost her._

_**2nd Mrs. de Winter**__: I don't want to know. I don't want to know._

_**Mrs. Danvers**__: You thought you could be Mrs. de Winter, live in her house, walk in her steps, take the things that were hers. But she's too strong for you. You can't fight her. No one ever got the better of her. Never. Never. She was beaten in the end, but it wasn't a man. It wasn't a woman. It was the sea._

Daphne Du Maurier's _Rebecca._


	2. Blair: Part 2

A/N: A few people requested a follow-up chapter to my one-shot and I felt a sudden wave of inspiration.

**Part II**

"_I wanted to go on sitting there, not talking, not listening to the others, keeping the moment precious for all time, because we were peaceful all of us, we were content and drowsy even as the bee who droned above our heads. In a little while it would be different, there would come tomorrow, and the next day and another year. And we would be changed perhaps, never sitting qite like this again. Some of us would go away, or suffer, or die, the future stretched away in front of us, unknown, unseen, not perhaps what we wanted, not what we planned. This moment was safe though, this could not be touched_."

Daphne Du Maurier, _Rebecca_.

* * *

There was a strange hush over the house that summer, and strange groans and creaks developed in the floorboards and hinges. The effect was disquieting; it seemed as if the house was preparing itself for some great event. Sometimes, at night, when the smell of jasmine and the thick heat made sleep impossible, I felt as if the house were coming alive: as it the odd straining noise was some attempt at breaking free.

But sometimes, when I sat in the old rocking chair next to the bed we shared, I would watch Chuck's chest rise and fall and wonder whether the house was falling apart in sympathy. I leant forward in the hair, examining the greying hair of his chest, which peaked out from his pyjama top. It was pointless, of course. You could never tell from the outside, but slowly and undeniably, the loose hold Chuck Bass had on life was slipping away.

I had taken to watching him during these restless nights in this groaning house. There was some solace in the rise-and-fall of his breath, and the moon glint off the two rings he wore: the one that marked his marriage to Blair in its proper place, and the one I gave him in a less vaulted spot on his rights hand. He had taken to fiddling with it during these long summer days, as we all gathered in this house in which he had chosen to pass his final days.

The day we arrived in this house, I sat with Eric on the porch and watched Chuck potter around the garden that Blair had tended, and where they still had their invisible dalliances to this day. I never joined him there: the way I never asked him where he went on the anniversary of her death. These little mercies I granted him gladly.

"How did he take the news?" Eric asked, toying with a desultory scone before taking a sip of the bitter coffee Chuck insisted on drinking.

"Obnoxiously," I intoned with a slight smile.

Eric snorted. "That sounds about right."

I cocked my head to the side, fancying that I could see his lips moving slightly as he pondered the rhododendrons.

"You know," I said carefully. "He's almost…impatient."

It was possible to be honest this way, with Eric – when it was just the two of us.

"You think he's…" Eric searched for the words, before he fell silent. Following the vector of his eyes, I saw he was looking at my wedding ring.

"Do I think he's hoping that he'll see her soon?" I asked wryly.

"You've always been a little too quick on the uptake for my tastes."

Once more I considered the way he moved around the garden, as if he were impatiently waiting for some big event, as if it were the night before graduation, or mere minutes before the end of an interminable wedding toast.

"I don't think he's letting himself even hope for it," I mused. "But how could he not? I mean doesn't everyone think about what will happen to them on the other side of the great…whatever?"

"Very eloquent." Eric swallowed dryly, losing his appetite. "You know…I'm about as jaded as they come. But, if there was ever a pair that could manage to find their way to each other…" He paused. "I can never understand the way you just don't let it bother you."

As Chuck crossed over from the flowers and moved towards us, I stood up, brushing the crumbs from my skirt and trying to think of a way to approach him that wouldn't provoke him to growl "I'm not an invalid." In these moments, when my tongue was tied and my hands wrung my skirt – in the moments when I couldn't make heads or tails of him: those were the moments when I felt her close to me, shaking her head at my shortcomings, pressing her hand to my shoulder and pushing me towards him.

She was always the more daring of the two of us. And he was coming towards her, as fast as he could.

The nights were getting worse. It was undeniable. He was dreaming of her; it was written on his sleeping face that always looked so young when he was unconscious. Leaning forward in my rocking-chair, I waited for the inevitable signal.

He moved his face towards the vast expanse of the bed I refused to sleep in these days. Each day, I gave him a new excuse about how I had fallen asleep on the couch. But the fact of the matter was that at night, I sometimes fancied I could see her, perched on the edge of the bed, running her hand over his fevered brow, before kissing him.

"_Soon,_" she'd whisper.

"_Blair_," he'd respond, before lifting a sleeping arm as if to catch hold of her before she disappeared once more.

Five years of marriage: five years borrowed from the life she should have spent with him. It was no more than a blink against their twenty-five – and the childish days before when they had fooled themselves into thinking that they could belong to anyone but each other. But I had stolen them from her, and for that she kept me from the bed they had once shared.

I had struck a deal with her, the day I married Chuck. I would keep him safe for her until the day she could pull back the invisible veil and take his hand in hers.

_Soon. Blair._

I made the same promise.

* * *

Elizabeth was the first to arrive with a box under her arm and red-rimmed eyes. She was the very picture of Blair, and for that reason Chuck loved her just a little more fiercely than his other children. But, even this recollection was hard for him. Far easier to sit with Henry and see only Blair's blurred edges.

We waited at the door for her to climb out of her Prius (never one for limos, much to her parents' chagrin) and climb the long path to the house that had been decorated by Blair. He dropped my hand at the sight of her – ran down the path and clutched her tightly. She braved these moments with good humour: with the play of conflicting emotions as his heart tightened and the recollections hit him in the face.

"Daddy," she said simply, adjusting her box before shooting a glance over her shoulder. It was then that we noticed another figure, negotiating the path with the hard mouth of someone unused to being outdoors. "Grandma wanted to see you. I hope that's okay."

For a moment, Chuck and Eleanor stared at each. It was always this way between them. For the longest time, they would search each other's faces, as if in a recognition that transcended the physical. Of all those who had known Blair, Chuck and Eleanor still had the haunted look of loss in their eyes and stamped across their features.

With a startling solemnity, Chuck offered Eleanor his arm, accompanying her to the door. As always when she saw me, her lips pursed – the only sign that she had seen me at all.

He had told Eleanor about the wedding himself, putting on his best cufflinks. To this day, I have no idea what passed between them, only that he had returned with red eyes and what looked like a red welt on his cheek. He refused to let me tend to his war wound.

"Nothing that I don't deserve."

But, for some strange reason she came to our wedding. She sat in the front row, staring at me with eagle eyes. As always when she looked at me, I felt too dowdy, too dumpy to be in front of people.

At the reception, I made the mistake of approaching her – thanking her for coming. Finally, with all the awkwardness of a young girl from Illinois trying to speak to the adults, I assured her that I was not trying to take Blair's place.

"My dear," she said, giving me the first of what would become her default disdainful glares. "Do not mistake my attendance here as some kind of peace offering. Charles knows exactly how I feel about this wedding. So you should know that the only reason I'm here is to remind him that he made vows to my daughter first." She paused, an almost malicious glint in her exhausted eyes. For an insane moment, I wanted to embrace the haughty woman who clearly despised me. "And do you know what he said?"

I nodded, and for a moment she seemed to reassess me. She had not known then, of the countless hours Chuck and I had spent discussing Blair, until I fancied that he wouldn't be able to think of anything more to say. But always, a new aspect occurred to him. She filled his mind, and he considered every moment they had spent together in exhaustive detail.

He spoke, and I listened. I listened and my scientific mind kept track of every contour until I fancied I had lived those memories.

When he married Blair, he refused to let go of her all night. He touched her white dress as if he couldn't believe what had been gifted to him by fate. Nate had stood up with him, of course.

"It was intense," he said, scratching his wide honest face. He had gotten better at sharing these stories with me. Although he still didn't understand why I was so interested. "They were real pains about it too. We had this whole plan about how they wouldn't see each other before the wedding – Eric, Serena, and all of us, we planned it. And they pretended to play along with it."

My husband had told me only part of the story, about how he and Blair had stolen moments away from the bridal party. About, how she had pressed her face into his shoulder and whispered, "I can't wait to be your wife."

"Quickie marriage in Vegas, then?"

"I can think of other quickies we could be having right now." One minute a romantic, the next a minx.

Of course, Nate didn't know about those stolen moments in dust-filled rooms in the grand house they had rented in Connecticut. All he knew was that when he left Chuck to sleep the night before the wedding, he returned in the morning to find Chuck and Blair asleep in each other's arms.

"We had sentries, posted at the door" he commented, smiling at the memory. "I still have no idea how they managed to pull it off."

"Love finds a way," I said thoughtfully. "In this case, possibly through a window."

"Blair?" Nate laughed aloud. "Climb through a window? Are you insane?"

At those moments, I was almost jealous of the off-hand way they would refer to her. So careless with their memories, so perfect in their recollections. I always felt as if I were ten steps behind them, despite my close attention.

At his wedding to Blair Chuck made this vow:

_Anything I know about love, I learned from you. But one thing I do know is that I carry your heart. I carry it with me, in my own. I am never without it. I carry your heart in my heart. Everywhere I go, you go._[1]

He would have followed her anywhere. Until her plane crashed into the icy ocean and he had nowhere to follow her to anymore.

At our wedding, I wore blue and in his speech, Chuck thanked me for my kindness. Love comes in different forms, I know. But then, there are the loves that cannot be kept apart, even by the stars.

"Well," Eleanor said stiffly. "Don't forget that he meant it. Even I can see, he meant it."

I understood, now, why she stayed so nearby all these years. Neither of them would ever fill the space that Blair had left in the universe. They clung to each other the way the stars do as greater forces strive to pull them apart. Elizabeth's box was full of old pictures of Chuck and Blair. For a while, we all looked at the baby photos and the certificates that Elizabeth and Henry had brought home to their proud parents.

Eleanor and Chuck passed them between each other all night – long after Elizabeth had gone to bed and I had retired to my writing in the study.

They stayed awake all night, even as their eyes burned. They would not sleep until they looked at every photo. The strange superstitions of the bereaved have never made sense to me. But then, I'm not a poet. And I don't inspire poetry.

_I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart_).

Soon. Blair.

* * *

Every marriage is different. I've never been comfortable with grand displays of romance. I'm someone who enjoys the affection of a shared newspaper or an early morning walk. My husband has given me jewellery, of course. But, he knows that anything too ostentatious would embarrass me.

In our house in New York, Blair's jewellery and clothes remain in the master bedroom, which she and Chuck once shared.

Three years after Blair's death, on the night of Elizabeth's engagement party, Chuck emerged from that dark, still room, with a beautiful diamond necklace. Without a word, he placed it around her neck. Then, kissing her once on the cheek, he left the room. She touched the diamonds, before shooting me a look.

"This was the first necklace that he ever gave mum," she said softly.

"It's beautiful," I said.

"It was more beautiful on her."

I looked at Elizabeth's pale shoulders in her elegant strapless black dress. I had learned by now not to give members of the Bass family those meaningless platitudes. They were too proud for that. Even good-natured, mischievous Henry would freeze up at any attempt at coddling. Instead, I offered her a smile and passed her the lipstick.

The day after the engagement party, while the rest of the house slept, I went into that room that Chuck had disappeared into. I usually avoided it, feeling an uncanny sense of intrusion whenever I opened the door and felt the rush of air escaping. It was superstition, I knew, but each time the door opened, I felt as if something escaped. Standing in the room, looking at the untouched mementoes of the life Blair had once lived.

I had promised myself that I would take only one look, before returning to those parts of the house that didn't feel out-of-bounds. Until I noticed a wristwatch sitting on the table; a man's wristwatch. As if this little detail had caused an irrepressible change in perception, more details appeared before my eyes: an engraved cigarette holder, a scarf draped over the back of the chair, and even a pair of cufflinks. Feeling slightly short of breath, I walked to the closet.

In the dewy morning light, it was suddenly clear to me. This room was not merely a mausoleum for the memory of Blair. Running my hands over the beautiful suits and ties that lined one half of the walk-in closet, I realized that Chuck had also left behind his exuberant old life in this dusty room. He had left all of his possessions with hers. He had shed his old life like an article of clothing.

Perhaps I had always sensed it. But, a part of me felt extraordinary melancholy at the sight of a life left entirely behind. It seemed almost cowardly, the way he had turned his back on these memories.

It was not until I gracefully stubbed my toe on the old wooden chest that I found them. There was something about the dark, carved wood that told me this was a newer addition to the room. Sinking to my knees I lifted the lid.

"What did you find?" my sister asked when I related the story. Despite her misgivings about the marriage, she had become acutely interested in my stories of the "old days."

"Paper," I said, my hand shaking slightly so that my tea spilled into my saucer.

"Paper?"

"No…I mean…letters. Hundreds of letters."

She leaned forward eagerly. "Did you read them?"

"No. I mean. I opened one. And that's when I realized it."

"You're really not telling this story very well," she complained, still nursing a hangover from the previous night's activities.

She couldn't have understood how it felt; I didn't really understand it. I had heard stories of the grand, romantic love of Chuck and Blair, and it had been this fascination that had first drawn me to him. But, it was only now that I realized the truth of the matter. Not that he would never get over her: he had warned me of that.

"It was full of letters that he's written to her," I said finally. "Every day. Letters about the children, or angry letters – asking how she could leave him – or letters begging her to forgive him for…me. Basically, he's written her love letters. Every day since she died."

She reached for my hand over the table. "You knew it would be this way. You told me so yourself."

"I know. And I'm not upset. It just…" I looked out the window of the café we had chosen to discuss this morbid topic. "It makes you think, doesn't it? How unfair it is that love like that can just be taken away."

"But that's the thing, isn't it? Chuck's too stubborn to let it be taken away. He's holding onto it, no matter what anyone says."

* * *

There is still one person who can make my husband laugh, but it takes the arrival of his son, Henry, holding a bottle of whiskey – the Macallan Fire and Rare Collection from 1939.

Henry may be Chuck's carbon copy, but he is also an extraordinarily responsible husband, and a very kind man. From the moment he arrives, he bolsters his family – most particularly, the very shaken Elizabeth – and fills the household with laughter. It is rarely valued, the gift of making people happy by your mere presence. But, in moments like this, I thank god for Henry and the way he understands how to make his father loosen his top button and laugh.

They sit in the living room and drink the most expensive bottle of scotch that money can buy, without even thinking about saving some for later. That is the one benefit of a death bed visit: there is no point saving the bottle. Not that Henry has ever been the type to save the bottle.

I paused at the door, drawn to the sound of Chuck speaking with such enthusiasm. They are sharing business exploits and youthful indiscretions and for a moment, I imagine that this must have been how it was when they were younger, and Blair sat on the couch with them, with her legs over Chuck's lap. Elizabeth and Henry both report being deeply embarrassed by the cavalier affection that their parents showed each other. They say that now with a deep sense of regret, wishing more than anything that their parents could still embarrass them at their school plays and birthday parties.

But soon enough, even Henry and Chuck turned to more solemn matters. "Why did Grandma Eleanor come up to see you?"

Chuck snorted. "She was probably disappointed she didn't get to kill me herself, so she wanted to be a witness at least."

"Dad." That's the thing about Henry: he disarmed people with his humour, but he possessed the uncanny ability to draw out those hidden thoughts that people scarcely want to say out loud.

"All those diet pills and vodkas have managed to convince your grandmother that your mother is hanging around, waiting for me to kick it."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not sure," Chuck admitted. "But she told me that no matter what her personal opinion of me was – and trust me, there were expletives involved – she knew that if there was a life-after-death or something, that nothing would stop Blair coming here. For me."

"Is that what you think?"

I could imagine the way his hand would spread over his forehead, as if the thought of it had given him a splitting headache. I had seen the gesture only twice before, and it had always been accompanied by mentions of Blair.

"I don't know," he said, in a somewhat guilty voice, as if he could scarcely believe he was confessing this. "I guess we'll see soon enough."

The words that he refused to say settled in the top corner of the room, like a moth. _I hope so._ But it was in my husband's every gesture. He had been patient for his children's sake. He had offered Henry guidance, had offered Elizabeth his arm at parties. He smiled and coddled and welcomed the small pink faces of Henry's children with the appropriate awe and happiness. But his children knew as well as the rest of us that a part of him had been waiting for this day to come: so that he needn't feel guilty about his impatience.

"More scotch?" Henry asked softly.

"Have we met?"

As I walked down the hall, I fancied I could see Blair slip through the crack of the door and join her boys in the living room.

* * *

We took our turns falling apart; that seems to me to be what families do.

I found Henry in the pool house with a golf club, smashing each of the windows. When our eyes met, his chest was heaving and his usually immaculate clothes were in disarray. He looked around wildly, as if he was searching for an invisible crowd. But there was only me, wide eyed at the sight of his unravelling.

"He's not even…He's not _fucking_ trying to hide…He's not trying to stop it…Can't he…I mean _we're_ not done with him. Isn't that…Doesn't that count for anything?"

"You and Elizabeth are the only reason he's lasted this long."

Henry leant on his golf club, the rage slipping away from him and a sheepish embarrassment taking its place. "You helped," he said grudgingly, running a hand through his dark hair.

I took his comment, folded it up and placed it carefully next to my heart.

When Serena and Nate arrived, Elizabeth dissolved into tears, hiding her face and hurrying from the room. Chuck made to follow her, but Serena put a soft hand on his forearm.

"Let me," she said gently.

Chuck gestured widely, allowing her to follow after Elizabeth. As Nate greeted me with his usual warm kiss on the cheek and bone-crushing hug, Chuck watched us with a smirk on his face. I had asked Serena about Nate's friendship with my husband, not quite making sense of what drew two such different men to each other. She had shaken her head and told me that I couldn't hope to understand. When they were sixteen, Blair had told them that they were part of something special, and in due course they had become something special. It was that simple.

I found Serena and Nate engaged in a whispered conversation that evening, in the hours when the sun sets the leaves on fire. Serena was wrapped in a shawl, despite the summer warmth. Looking up and down the hall, rubbing her elbows, she shook her head at Nate: still the picture of good health, still beautiful even as his hair became undeniably grey.

"I'm telling you, Nate," she whispered. "Sometimes I see her in this house."

"It's just your memories."

"But I mean…if she _were_ going to make an appearance…"

Nate frowned, before reaching out to cease her hand's methodical rub. "Have you been drinking Eleanor's Kool-Aid?"

They laughed, but as the rounded the corner in search of Chuck, the strange creaking noise seemed to increase in volume, causing Nate to jump.

* * *

Each night, the same words. I waited for them, if for no other reason than they assured me that my husband was still alive for his late-night dalliances with his wife.

_Soon. Blair._

_

* * *

_

They settled in the kitchen, Nate, Serena and Chuck. Chuck had taken to sleeping during the day, but found himself taken over by a sudden wakefulness during the midnight hours.

"Are you scared?" Serena asked Chuck as they nibbled on whatever was leftover from dinner.

Chuck shot her a strange look. "What on earth do _I_ have to be scared of?"

There was a long pause.

"He's _Chuck Bass_," Nate quipped, easing the tension and undoubtedly earning a few dinner rolls aimed for his head.

"There's something wrong with us – all of us," Serena said, shaking her head. "We shouldn't be laughing."

"Laugh or cry," Chuck said simply. "What's coming is coming."

"You may be a morbid asshole," Nate said fondly. "But I am going to miss you so much, man. I can't even believe that this is goodbye."

"It's the end of the Non-Judging Breakfast Club," Serena said mournfully.

What happened next was so uncharacteristic of Chuck that I couldn't help but peak into the room, feeling a thrill of voyeurism at the sight of three quarters of the Non-Judging Breakfast Club toasting the passing of another of their cohort.

With a determined look on his face, Chuck reached out and took Nate's hand and placed it on top of Serena's. "There. That's the Non-Judging Breakfast Club."

For a while, Nate stared at his hand over Serena's. Both of them had worn wedding rings – in Serena's case, three different times – but it didn't really matter. By placing his hand in hers, Chuck had guaranteed that Blair's vision lived on.

Standing up, he offered them another one of his smirks. "I'll catch you guys in the next life."

When he came into hallway, he found me standing there guiltily, eavesdropping. With a wry smile, he offered me his hand and led me back upstairs.

* * *

With that simple salute, _I'll catch you in the next life_, Chuck slipped into a feverish sleep. For three days he writhed and babbled, until a stillness overtook him and the rasping sound of his breath entering and leaving his lungs was all that could be heard.

Every scheme, every jealousy, every petty disappointment, and moment of savage loss: all of it came down to the in-out of a rasping breath.

But every moment of love, every moment of fatherly affection, and every promise kept with dignity lingered in the faces of all those loved ones who gathered around his bed, for no other reason than they loved him too much to allow him to die alone.

They all thought me morbid, writing down the story of the woman who I had never even met, whose plane had crashed into cold waters long before I had known Chuck Bass. But I had never seen it that way. The hole that Blair had left in the lives of everyone in this room, and most of all Chuck, was a sign of hope.

Chuck and Blair's story may have ended in loss and separation, but it was only possible to tell it in a series of love letters.

When it happened, it happened suddenly.

Chuck's breath hitched, and he lifted slightly from the pillow, his eyes open for the first time in days.

"Daddy?" Elizabeth whispered.

But Chuck's eyes were elsewhere: focused on the point before his face, where the air was opening up to show the vision of whatever it was that followed this life. Perhaps it was the mental trick of a body shutting down, but Chuck's face broke out into a luminous smile.

"I see her," he said, his voice choked with tears. "I _see_ her."

It may have been the treasured memory of a mind shutting down, but all I know for sure is that Chuck Bass died with a smile on his face and one word on his lips.

_Blair._

_

* * *

_

[1] "I carry your heart with me" by Edward Estlin Cummings.


End file.
